This invention relates to the creation of a detailed and comprehensive database on the moment-to-moment movements of the players and ball in sports contests, and to the subsequent analysis of this database for the extraction of a variety of statistics, measurements, and other information concerning the event.
For many years it has been the practice in professional sports, such as basketball and soccer, to manually accumulate statistical data on the performance of the players and teams. Much of this data concerns discrete talleys of player performance such as shooting accuracy or incidence of fouls. There has been, up until now, no systematic quantitative information maintained on the complete movements of the players and the ball during a game, that is to say, the continuous dynamics of the event. The accumulation of detailed positional data throughout the course of the game would be an infeasible manual task.
Creating such a database, by automated methods, however, would provide a great wealth of information, previously unobtainable, on many aspects of a sport. In basketball, for example, a sport where the judicious expenditure of an athlete's energy is crucial, consistent measurement of the amount of court covered and total distance run by a particular player would be extremely useful in optimizing an individual's performance. Statistics on the spread of ball rebound angles, as a function of the shooting angle, is another example. On a more sophisticated level, having a comprehensive game database would make possible a systematic characterization of the inter-player dynamics of "fast breaks" and other complex situations.
A number of sports have been considered in the development of this invention. Aside from basketball and soccer, other sports that would benefit from this technology include volleyball, tennis, and hockey. In all of these sports player positioning is extremely critical, making a data base such as that made possible by this invention of considerable value.
The invention described herein is a computer-based system for the accumulation of the sort of information described above. The key component of the invention is a digital computer tracking processor which maintains continuous information on the position of each player and the ball almost all of the time, by applying image processing techniques to information provided by one or more video cameras. The system, in its principal form, is interactive, involving the assistance of one or more human operators. Situations will inevitably occur in which the tracking processor is unable to resolve an ambiguity (for example a player substitution) and will ask an operator to intervene. Suitable camera placement, as well as efficient image processing, keeps the frequency of this interaction within managable limits.
By combining a powerful, though imperfect, tracking processor, with a knowledgeable operator, the desired result can be obtained, and with reasonable expense and effort. This invention will greatly facilitate the application of the ever expanding array of computer resources to the field of sports analysis.